


is it cold?

by chiroptericDecedent



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dissociation, Extended Metaphors, F/F, One-Sided Relationship, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-11 01:47:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18420319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiroptericDecedent/pseuds/chiroptericDecedent
Summary: Terezi reflects upon the sorry state of herself, her lover, and what remains of Paradox Space.a little somethin i wrote in hopes that the epilogue will fill the vrisrezi shaped hole in my vrisrezi shaped hearthappy early 4/13!





	is it cold?

Terezi assumed paradox space would be colder.

 

An infinite inky black void being swallowed up by a seemingly more-infiniter stark white void. Perhaps she doubted the mere possibility that maybe, just maybe, Sburb would be at least a little accommodating to their general comfort, she thought as she rocketed through the pitch black of the vast expanse, illuminated periodically by psychedelic cracks in its sheen. It was an optimistic thought. But then came the all-consuming mass before her. By all-consuming she assumed all the mass and heat across paradox space would be sucked into the singularity, leaving the husk of what remained frigid and lifeless. Cold. But it never occurred to her that an all-encompassing, reality swallowing pocket would devour all the cold, too.

 

Is it possible to remove ‘cold’ from a place? Terezi always assumed cold just meant the absence of heat. That it was something that could be fixed by wrapping up snugly in her dragon cape, or getting all up in the personal space of a loved one. Annoyed at first by the incursion, but welcoming all the same. She'd gladly go for those solutions right now, but the conundrum still remained. She supposed she'd been so used to chasing warmth, and comfort, that she didn't realise the bitter cold had its limits as well. Despite chasing a tepid selfishness in the impossibly dark abyss, despite the piercing white nothingness, nothing was truly black and white, was it?

 

Terezi didn't have to wonder what the absence of both warmth and frost would feel like. She was familiar with concept of neutrality, yes. A stance one takes when neither side is wholly convincing. She detested it. A lack of commitment, of making an informed decision. But now, not really knowing if she wanted to bundle up warmer or peel the skin from her flesh in protest, she finally understood what “sitting on the fence” felt like. And she was sore in more ways than one.

 

It's numbness. a lack of any real substance either way. Sure there might be fleeting moments where you convince yourself that a chill just ran up your spine. Or if you think hard enough about it, and really force yourself, maybe rubbing your hands together for hours on end could finally produce a spark of warmth. It doesn't make sense to desire either, at the moment. You want to be warmer when your teeth are chattering and your fingers go rigid. You want to be colder when you're drenched in your own sweat and clamouring for breath under an oppressive haze. It's a reaction. And Terezi doubted she reacted to much of anything nowadays. Nights? Hard to tell.

 

There sure was a bunch to react to out here, technically speaking. Debris hurtling like meteors, spiralling past her and just grazing the back of her rocket pack as she sputtered through their volatile dance. Splinters in the very fabric of reality threatening to open wide their jagged maws and swallow her whole, as if she didn't already feel preyed on and drained. But for a brief moment a pang of guilt would flare up in the pits of her stomach, unidentifiable in its source, until it too succumbed to the numbness. Flickering past her: the ghostly forms of her once friends, allies, enemies, acquaintances, and faces she couldn't place a name to.

 

She had tried to help the first few, she kept convincing herself. Sweeping them up as they were being dragged, drawn and quartered by the sick hands of the inevitable. She'd find a fleeting respite. Talk a little. Well, more like listen. Get to know their name if she didn't. Or if she'd already forgotten. Their history, their struggles, their regrets. They'd all be tacked onto the cork board of Terezi’s mind and left there as a sort of momento, to be remembered, she told herself. And then she'd leave, vowing to return. And never see them again. And the tack would fall. The papers amassing into one great big pile of redundancy on the floor.

 

Can a lost soul really be saved? Terezi pondered this question often. unsurprised by its vagueness. Nothing was ever that simple in this place, ‘ **Ultimate Riddle** ’ and all. She assumed her question meant the passing ghosts, they’re as lost as can be after all. She watched their faces howl and contort in painful, pleading screams as they were wrenched into nowhere, what could she even do for them? Indulging their reminiscing seemed to be helpful, for the time being. It would ease their woes. Give them some warmth. But she'd tried to bring them back, lead them by the hand through the blinding fluorescent white of the door. Though she found as she crossed that threshold the weight in her palm would fade away into the welcoming blue of the new world’s sky and it's congratulatory message. And she'd be left with that same fleeting pang of guilt. When she thought about it, their hands were like hers. They weren't clammy and warm, or shaking and cold. Just… neutral.

 

Terezi was all too aware of the concept of guilt, both objectively and personally. A sickening flicker of regret considered all too late. An admission, acceptance of a transgression, a confession that could be used to close a case for good. But she found herself unable to pinpoint the root of the occasional wounds in her gut. Just like everything else, it found itself nestled comfortably in that pit in her mind that opened up to swallow any lingering thought that persisted too long.

 

At least she still felt a basic pity for the ghosts. That was reassuring. Reassuring to who, she couldn't say. But compassion seemed to be her one remaining resource. Dwindling slowly, like the embers of an exhausted campfire, but there all the same. Her pity lead her to reconsider the burning question, whether there was truly anything out there for lost souls to find solace within. She hated being poetic, she really did. It was cheesy and flowery to the point of being downright pretentious. But she couldn't help but consider herself one of these lost souls. Maybe even _she_ was, too.

 

Of course, neither of them were dead. At least, not in the obvious ways. Terezi’s limbs still ached after hours of exhaustion and hunger clawed at her insides when she neglected its call for too long. Maybe it would be better if she was dead. Not in like, a suicidal way. But it would sure be a lot easier to not have to drag her protesting body around everywhere. She was sick of its mutiny, and perhaps she'd feel a little less unsettled if she knew the deep-seated numbness was supposed to be there. She ran a pointed nail across her skin, watching the veins underneath pulse in their uniform beat. It seemed fitting--her blood was middle of the road. Not searingly warm like the passionate burgundy shades, not as frigid as the watery depths like her bluer companions. Again. Just neutral.

 

And yet… neutral implies a balance, doesn’t it? Perhaps there was a better word for it. This lack of substance that threatened to chain her down. If there was one, she wouldn't know it. She was smart, socially speaking. Enough sweeps of mentally scripting her conversations and analysing the social mechanisms of those around her will do that. But her legal studies and memorisation of their guidance betrayed the fact that she didn't really feel all that intelligent.

 

_Vriska would know a word for it._

 

Ah. Here we go. She'd danced around it for long enough, she supposed. She could wax poetic for as long as she wanted about temperature and long winded metaphors thereof, but it always tied back to _her_ , didn't it.

 

Finding her wasn't really a matter of desire anymore, at least not romantic or sexual. It had morphed into a perverted sort of purpose. Something she felt obligated yet more than willing to strive for. And in this void of wacky and absurd dead teenagers stumbling towards their eventual double death, it was something familiar. She always brought Vriska to justice, no matter what. Whether it be forgiveness or retribution. Something she was good at, for once.

 

Her mind defaulted back to Vriska all the time, like a song drilled into her sponge. Whenever there was a lull in conversation with a quiet soul, or she lay tossing and turning in her coon wishing for yet fearing the embrace of sleep. It seemed to be a safety blanket, but not a particularly comfortable one. Way too itchy. Left her skin crawling.

 

It was like a jumbled puzzle cube or the edges of a jigsaw left abandoned on a table, just in view, but so far away all at once. It was a fun distraction to sit down and chip away at its obscurity, but in the end, it would never be finished. Terezi wasn't sure if this was out of her own incompetence, or if it was just yet another cruel machination of paradox space built to be frustratingly incomplete, too lofty of a goal to even consider seeing through to the end.

 

But Vriska still existed. Vriska was still real. It felt more like a reassuring insistence than a presentation of factual evidence.

 

She was here. Somewhere. She had to be. If ‘here’ was even a thing she could comprehend anymore.

 

She always managed to slink away from danger somehow, and Terezi was always there to drag her back home.

 

Home. God, where the fuck even was home anymore. They sure didn’t care for her back on Earth C. She’d be gone far too long for anyone to care, she told herself.

 

Her lifeline, her only tie to reality, to physicality other than pungent smells and a dry tongue.

Where has she stolen away to?

 

Where was her warmth? Her light, snorting laughter and homely, confident smirk.

Where was her frost? Her cold, icy stares and bitter, piercing words.

 

What right had she to insert herself as Terezi’s beacon, her guiding light, only to wrench it all back when it suited her most?

 

Terezi would gladly run her blade through her lost lover’s back all over again, if only it meant another shot at tearing down the confines of her suffocating reality to reunite them.

 

It was selfish, and she revelled in it. She was selfish, more so than Vriska, if that was even possible. And it sought to consume all else like the black hole before her in Vriska’s stead.

 

She craved her chill, and missed her fire. She desperately wanted Vriska to elicit some sort of emotional reaction within her. Sadness, pity. Happiness, glee. A cocktail of frustration and forgiveness.

 

When had Vriska last made her feel angry? Truly, heatedly, passionately angry?  
  
When she left to play the hero?

 

When she was willing to leave them all for dead for her pride?

 

Was that--were those--the same? Similar, but different? A repetition or a mockery?

 

It wasn’t familiar. None of it was. Even with literally some other Terezi’s memories, her own felt alien.

 

Abstract.

  
  


Lost.

  
  
  
  


_“hey terezi, how’re things?”_ Toothy. A little shaky with rings of naivete. Egbert, insufferably Egbert.

 

Terezi hadn’t noticed herself answering the palmhusk buzzing in her pocket. Bringing it up to her ear had been muscle memory long forgotten.

 

_“helloooo…? earth c to pyrope?”_ His voice crackled slightly. Either it was his uncertainty, or the static due to distance between them. Not physical distance. Emotional? Maybe. Most likely the fact that she was in a pocket dimension tearing at the seams. She took a beat to stitch together her own faults.

 

“M1GHT 1 R3M1ND YOU TH4T 1 4M ON 1MPORT4NT 1NV3ST1G4T1V3 BUS1N3SS. ON WHOS3 4UTHOR1TY 4R3 YOU 1NT3RRUPT1NG M3?” Practiced and articulate, robotic even. Terezi had forgotten what her voice sounded like, and this certainly wasn’t it.

 

_“my authority, stupid. what, is it a crime to care about my friends now too?”_ He chuckled, noticabley hollow. ‘Friends’. It all felt horribly off.

 

“R1GHT. NO… 1 M3AN YEA, 1’M F1N3.”

 

_“hey dude… is every thing all right out there? It sounds like you’re sniffling... is it cold?”_ She wiped back a tear with a shaking claw.

 

“Y3S, 3GB3RT. 1’M FUCK1NG FR33Z1NG. UNB34R4BLY, UNF4THOM4BLY COLD.”

  



End file.
